1. Field of the Invention
The invention involves a printer-processor for preparing individual plies from a paper roll for collating in a manifold business forms collator to make multi-ply business forms.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A manifold business form is made up of a number of plies, each of which is printed with specific information and may have boxes for information, or alphanumeric character entry. Examples of such business forms are multi-layer invoices or bills sent out to consumers which are snap-apart forms. Presently the manufacture of such forms requires a large amount of machinery. One two-part system for making such forms, described subsequently in FIG. 1 uses one or more press units and a collator. The press unit(s) prepares the individual plies on a paper web. The collator receives the web, separates the plies and puts them together in the form. The press is roll-fed and made up of one or more printing units, optional units for punching and perforating as may be required on the particular form, and a unit to punch one or more lines of marginally located holes which are registered in a known relationship to the printing and other operations. Such presses may deliver the webs into zigzag folded packs or more usually wind them back into rolls.
Plies are processed through presses, usually the same press, a ply at a time or on occasion side by side, if the paper and ink colors are common.
Most presses are quite large and are constructed in a way so that the cylinder circumferences are not changeable or if changeable require large and expensive modules to be changed. This situation has led to the evolution of a number of standard form sizes which are evenly divisible into a relatively small number of press circumferences. Additionally, devices which write on manifold forms most commonly vertical space in increments of 1/6", 1/8" and less often 1/10".
This combination of circumstances has led to commonly used press circumferences and form sizes evenly divisible into them as follows:
______________________________________ Press Circumferences Form Sizes ______________________________________ 17" 2 5/6", 3 4/10", 41/4", 52/3", 81/2" 14" or 21" 31/2", 7" 22" 23/4", 51/2", 71/3" 24" 3", 4", 51/2", 6" 26" 31/4" 19" 43/4" ______________________________________
There are other circumferences and form sizes in use, but very few. The first three lines show the most common press circumferences and form sizes.
Thus, each individual press typically must be purchased for and dedicated to the manufacture of a limited number of the total assortment of commonly purchased form sizes.
The collator assembles the plies by pin feeding the individual plies from the rolls or packs simultaneously, using the marginally punched holes for feeding and piloting to superimpose the plies into proper register. The collator may also interweave carbon tissues or fasten plies and carbon tissues together. Collators are equipped with appropriate devices to either deliver snap-apart sets or continuous manifold forms. They may have the means for holding and unwinding rolls or unfolding zigzag folded packs to suit the style or press which performed the preceding operation. Collators are typically troublesome machines with much need to stop, adjust and restart. Also collators are multi-circumference machines and can be readily changed to produce any common size form.
Conventional flexographic presses have been used to print business forms. These presses are variable repeat in increments of the circular pitch or gearing used on the particular press. However, these normally require ink dryers and have not been widely popular.
Most of the two types of presses described above print via offset lithography. A small but significant minority print via letterpress or dry offset. All three kinds of print units use paste inks which dry, at least in part, by oxidation or polymerization and which must be distributed to the plates via fairly complex inkers having many rollers which require attention, adjustment, and cleaning by skilled operators. These types of printing waste a substantial amount of paper during setup and produce one or many defective images on start up after each time a printing unit is stopped for any reason.
Another common method of printing is a single step and involves multi-web presses which print and perform the other operations needed on the finished form on all webs simultaneously and deliver the product, finished, as the collator would deliver it. Setup time, and plate cost, since a complete set is needed per web, and start up waste is much higher on multi-web presses than on single web presses, therefore, while they are efficient in a running mode, they are only cost effective for very large orders.
To overcome the problems of the prior art, it would be advantageous to have a printer processor which would:
(a) Take advantage of the circumference flexibility of collators by allowing them to receive directly from the printer processor a variety of webs having different size plies, thus reducing investment required to produce all common size forms.
(b) Utilizing novel type of printing to allow the printer-processor to be stopped and started in conjunction with the collator thus eliminating the normal high setting up cost and paper waste due to stops and starts.
(c) Deskilling the printing operation and making the changeover from one printed copy to another essentially an adjustment free procedure.
(d) Doing all of the above with printing units having a plate cylinder driving system which allows common form sizes to be printed with cylinders of much smaller than normal circumferences which are easily manhandleable without hoists or other mechanical assists and which require plates of fewer images, thus costing less.
The basic idea is to eliminate the need to process plies through a cumbersome press but instead process the plies through a printer-processor which does the above, is small, is easily mounted next to a collator, and can feed a paper web of plies directly to the collator. This basic idea is made economically and operationally feasible by two novel features.